1. Field of invention
This invention relates generally to systems and methods for processing documents such as bank checks and/or remittance documents. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system of processing documents using image processing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
High speed document processors are known which read documents, such as checks or remittance coupons, and, based upon the information read, control a subsequent processing operation on that document such as sorting it into a selected one of the plurality of pockets. Document processing of checks is discussed in the IBM Publications "Check Processing: Issues and Trends", GE20-0685-2 (3rd Ed., 6/84), and "IBM ImagePlus High Performance Transaction System (HPTS)", G520-6742-00 (1990), which are specifically incorporated herein by reference.
Conventionally, the document processing involves obtaining all the necessary machine readable information from that document as it is read during a single passage through a document processor from an input hopper to an output (sometimes referred to as a "single pass"), and using that information to determine in which pocket the check is to be sorted. An example of such a system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,260,879 to Galatha, et al and assigned to IBM. In some cases some or all of this information is incomplete or missing.
Recently several techniques relating to using digital image for document processing have been proposed. These systems, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,205,780, 4,264,808 and 4,813,077, relate to the storage and processing of digital images in conjunction with conventional document processors.
Each of these systems has the disadvantage that if some of the machine-readable data from the document is missing or unreadable, that document cannot be processed and must be rejected. Then, later, some further processing of that document is necessary. The lack of machine-readable data could occur, for example, if a portion of a routing-and-transit field were not readable or if the document were not inscribed with an amount field, and processing was based on such field.